Development Work

Practice Lip-synch Animation

Summer Work

Last year my animations felt very stiff, so I wanted to practice more. I feel like I have gotten to a place where my animations feel smoother and not as static as before. There are a few things I still struggle with. Animating the torso is the hardest part for me. In this animation, there are a few places where the torso feels stiff.

In order to improve my work, I try to apply the animation principles where appropriate. I pay attention to the arcs of the arms. Overlap and follow through in the body. I tried to push my lip-synch further. Lip-synch is something I struggled with last year and I feel like I have gotten more comfortable with it now.

Now I want to try to push the performance even further. Something I have struggled with since the begging is exaggeration. I want to try a more exaggerated style of animation next.

Animation Studies

I wanted to study a few animated scenes in order to help me understand how I can exaggerate my poses. I decided to draw over these scenes and study the movements of the characters. I feel like my animations lack character and I was hoping studying these scenes will help me out with that. I think I need to take the character's personality and the emotion they're feeling in the moment into consideration while animating. Rapunzel's movements are more lively and quick. As well her movements are softer than those of hiccups. I need to think about how I can show the character's personalities through their movements. I think that in my animation it's difficult to pinpoint their personalities through their movements alone.

I decided to try and animate these scenes. These animations are not polished I just wanted to see if I can portray these characters personalities and emotions.

I wanted to make this animation to practice more. I liked the reference because the movements are very exaggerated. I think the reason why I have so much trouble exaggerating is because of my reference. My movements are very restricted and I feel like I don't do a good job at acting out the character's different personalities.

Practice Animations

I want to improve my performance animation. I chose a scenario where two characters are waiting for someone who's late. The first character is more shy and calm. The second character is more feisty and confident. I tried to show their personality through the performance.

Practice Animation

My goal for this term is to improve my animation skills. I am going to do a bunch of small animation tests to do that.

Ani 1

I received feedback on this animation. I was advised to pay attention to the arc of the hand and slow in and slow out. The hand goes up slower and comes down faster. Something that I need to pay more attention to is the spine and the line of action. I tried to show more dynamic poses by pushing the line of action more. I feel like this animation is an improvement from my previous work altho I think I could have worked more on polishing it.

Improvement from feedback

After receiving feedback on this animation I have realised that I need to pay more attention to the line of action and slow in and slow out. I will keep this in mind and apply it to my future animations. I decided to try and find references from movies because I feel like my own references are pushing my animations back. I feel like using references from professional actors has helped me improve my animations.

Ani 2

The feedback I received on this animation included paying attention to the arc of the head when the body goes up. I learned about opposing actions, when the body moves forward and the head moves backwards.

Improvement from feedback

Ani 3 - Process

I really like how this animation turned out. I found that I pay too much attention to the reference. I think this is why my animations have turned out stiff in the past. I turned my reference off from time to time while animating this. I tried pushing some of the poses more and adding new poses.

This is the last lip-sync animation I did. I learned the most out of making this. The reference I chose doesn't have much movement so I added more poses. We had a talk from a past student while I was making this. He was talking about how there needs to be a break from time to time, the character can't move all the time. He said that sometimes a simpler animation has more effect than a more complicated one. I started removing some of the poses and I tried to add a break in the performance.

Final Animation

This is the final playblast I did. I feel like I could have still polished it a bit more. The feedback I got for this included things like settle. This is something I need to pay attention to, like how the head drags when the torso moves. I need to pay more attention to how different body parts move in correspondence to others, when she takes a breath, the arm moves.

Visual Development - Character Design

When I first showed an interest in animation I was interested in visual development. Later I decided to go into 3D animation. I still like designing my own characters so I wanted to include this in my portfolio.

I came up with these two characters Thea and Lenna a few years ago and I took this opportunity to finally design their look. They are both in their early twenties. These characters are a part of a fantasy story that I came up with. In this story, they are both wizards. Thea is a nature wizard and Lenna can shapeshift and talk to animals. These characters are very different from each other. Thea is an introvert. She is very kind but she is as well very shy. She does open up when she gets close with someone. Lenna is more confident in herself. She is strong-willed and knows what she wants. She can be very closed off. She doesn't let her emotions show easily and she doesn't smile much. Thea sees Lenna as her role model. She feels insecure about her body and her abilities and she looks up to Lenna for her confidence and strength. Throughout the story, these two characters help each other grow and become better people. Thea learns how to be more confident and speaks up for herself and Lenna learns how to be kinder and talk about her feelings.

I imagine Thea to have long black hair, which she hides her face behind when she gets shy. She has dark eyes and pale skin. I want her to have bigger and rounder features. She hasn't experienced much in her life, she never had many friends. Rounder features are going to make her look more innocent like a child, which is how I see her at the beginning of her journey. She is shorter and a little chubby, which is why she sometimes feels insecure.

I started drawing out a few features. This is the first thing I do when I design my characters. I draw out a few features I see on my character and then I chose which one suits them best. I gave Thea big round eyes and a round face. I gave her thick eyebrows and slightly plumper lips.

I knew I wanted her to have dark hair with pale skin but I still wanted to experiment and see how she looked with lighter hair. I didn't like this look on her so I gave her dark blue hair, black eyes and pale skin.

Here I experimented with different shapes for the body. I tried a rounder body and more rectangular bodies. I have always associated Thea with round, soft shapes, which reflect her personality. So I went with the first body. I drew different poses of her. She keeps to herself so I imagine her hand are always close to her body, she doesn't take up much space. She likes reading and spends time alone so I tried to show that through these poses.

I see Lenna as a strong character. I have always associated her with a lioness. She is the leader and doesn't stop until she achieves her goal. I see her to have darker skin and short hair. Her features are sharper. She is taller than Thea and has what the media today calls 'the perfect body'. She is seen as beautiful and perfect by other people. I wanted to make her this way because it's going to influence Thea's journey. As they get closer Thea finds out there isn't such a thing as perfect and with Lenna's help, she learns to love herself and her body.

I did the same thing with this design. I wanted to see what she would look like with rounder eyes but I didn't like that so I gave her smaller, sharper eyes. I knew I wanted to give her shorter hair but I experimented to see what she would look like with long hair.

When I was choosing her colour palette I looked at a lion's fur and incorporated the colours. I tried giving her darker hair and lighter hair. I loved how the lighter hair looked on her so I went with that. I gave her unnatural-coloured hair and eyes because of her shapeshifting abilities. She has taken on some of the features of the animals she shapeshifts into.

For her, I tried round shapes and rectangular shapes. I see Lenna as sharp shapes, which matches her personality. I feel like I could have done a better job with the poses. Lenna is very outgoing and confident and I feel like I didn't capture that with these drawings.

I wanted to take these characters and use them for my FMP. I wanted to incorporate their personalities but instead of a fantasy story, I was thinking of putting them in the real world, which is why they are wearing modern clothing.